


Jane fiddles

by annathecrow



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Female-Centric, Ficlet, Gen, Headcanon, Jane Foster character study, Relationship Study, self-indulgent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-30 00:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6399841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annathecrow/pseuds/annathecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy studies Political Science - she knows how to watch people. It’s her thing. She notices stuff. That could have been the end of it, but isn’t.</p><p>(Pretty much a "Darcy thinks Jane's awesome" fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jane fiddles

Jane fiddles.

Darcy studies Political Science - she knows how to watch people. It’s her thing. She notices stuff. That could have been the end of it, but isn’t.

She’s a bored twenty-something tasked with a job she’s both over- and under-qualified for at the same time, and so she doesn’t just file this observation away like she would if she had better things to do.

It starts innocuous. She notices _when_ Jane fiddles, how, what with. As things usually go, it doesn’t stay innocuous for long. Before a week is out, there is a spreadsheet, with extensive notes and a folder of photo documentation.

(Darcy can be very thorough, when she chooses to be.)

A pen; red, with a textured rubber grip; while going over the data from their last night trip to the desert. A bottle cap; blue, the regular size, not the shallow and wide kind; the time the round thingamajig died and Jane spent a week on weird DIYer forums trying to figure out how to fix it with a car toolbox and parts ordered from Ebay. A hair tie; Darcy’s own, rainbow-colored, round; that one night Jane’s mom called and she kicked Darcy out on the curb, where she sat and watched Jane pace the floor of their repurposed car dealership, like a really agitated betta fish.

It’s logical, the next step, Darcy thinks. She leaves a hair tie on the table in front of their data computer, and waits. It doesn’t work. A piece of blue wire on their kitchen table the next day does, though.

From then, it’s on. And, look - Jane’s brilliant. She’s, like, a genius several times over, and she just... _sees_ things, where nobody else ever would. But - and this Darcy will never, _ever_ get - she bites her unpeeled bananas and forgets pencils in her hair and doesn’t even bat an eye when she finds a _fucking rubber dinosaur_ in the box with measuring equipment.

(The dinosaur is a “yes”, by the way.)

Her hight school teachers would be proud, Darcy thinks. Some of those long lectures on proper scientific method _did_ stick, after all. But it might have been the weeks trying to do right by Jane’s Science, too. Darcy isn’t really sure. She punches in the newest set of numbers from the gray doohickey into the correct spreadsheet, and then types “dinosaur; green, textured rubber, bendy tail” in her own.

Sure, when Eric Selvig arrives, she has to tone it down a little. But she’d bet she can keep this going by switching to girly stuff like hair decs, which he probably won’t even register. For, like, two weeks at least.

It’s going pretty well and she’s eyeing a pack of tiny, aggressively purple claw hair clips for the next round, when ripped aliens come raining from the skies and stuff gets way more interesting then Darcy ever expected from an internship.

When the secret assholes come and steal their stuff, she’s too busy mourning her iPod to remember they got her notes, too. They even took her _stash_ , which, what the fuck? And, okay, Jane’s research. But Darcy’s been there for typing up most of that, and she’s pretty sure like 75% of it is in Jane’s head anyway, so. She could probably just do it all again, and in half the time since they’ve already went through all “nope, not gonna work” parts, right? Look, Darcy doesn’t really understand how hard science works, no matter how much Jane tries to explain.

In the end, Jane’s research comes back, and Jane’s space boyfriend doesn’t, and Darcy kind of... forgets about the whole Jane-fiddles thing. They go from SHIELD’s shit-list to SHIELD’s payroll, and there is an _actual budget_ , an even an invite to an academic conference - which does sound kinda shady since it’s for both of them, but ehhhhh, as if she’s gonna say no to a free trip to Norway.

Which is how they end up in a lecture hall in Tromso, watching a live CNN feed instead of the scheduled talk, because apparently, the world is ending. There is a flash of familiar red cloak on the screen, and then a wide shot of Thor punching a space whale in the face. Jane makes distressed little sounds and tugs at the sleeves of her flannel shirt.

And, well.

Darcy reaches into her pocket and pulls out the tiny rubber troll she’s been carrying there all the way from the airport souvenir shop. Without saying a word, she shoves it into Jane’s hands.

Jane stares at it for a moment, and then at Darcy. Then she makes a sort of huff-laugh, and it sounds like it kinda means a lot of things at the same time. But there’s a loud crash from the feed and the news anchor's voice pitches even higher and more frantic than it already is, and so Jane says nothing and just smiles at Darcy before turning to the projection and forgetting about the world around her.

For the next eternity, they watch Thor, Iron Man, and some other guys duke it out with aliens. Darcy really hopes they’re gonna win, because these aliens don’t look as nice as Thor and his friends.

Next to her, Jane’s eyes are glued to the feed, her hands tug and twist the tiny arms of the troll, and she fiddles and fiddles and fiddles.


End file.
